Sunday, September 27, 2009

Some small projects

I have been knitting, I swear I have! I'm half way done with my 3rd square for the Buncha Squares blanket. It's been an adjustment, going to work 5 days a week. And after a day of work, garter stitch is just the thing I need. :) It's also been an adjustment wearing regular clothes to work instead of pajamas scrubs.

Last weekend, I finished my Selbu Modern. It remains unblocked. I think I want to try to block it over a balloon. I'm not so keen on the idea of blocking it on a plate--I want more of a softer slouch shape. Since I'm not sure when I'll get around to block it, here's a horrible unblocked picture to give you the general idea of how it looks.

Selbu Modern, unblocked

Little sis starts college this week at UW. So, in honor of that, and her 19th birthday last week, I whipped up this purple and gray striped hat today. The yarn is Karabella Aurora 8, which is soooooo soft! This hat should keep her warm at all those Huskie football games she has tickets for. The pattern is improvised, the details are on Ravelry.

School Spirit Hat

A few weeks ago, Raj was complaining of having chilly feet, so I decided knitted slippers were called for. I ended up using this free pattern, slightly modified. I used the heel modifications described here, and then picked up stitches around the opening and knit about 1 inch of 2x2 ribbing for a little bit of ankle warming.

Slippers

The yarn is left over from my first sweater, some scratchy aran weight wool that I ordered from Elann a few years ago. It's Austermann Naturwolle, which is apparently out of production. It made a very warm sweater--too warm for me to wear except for maybe 2 days a year. The color and scratchiness of the yarn remind me of camping, so I called it my cabin sweater. But it made for some cozy slippers!

Slippers

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A Pictoral

Purple Unicorn
Purple Unicorn, Puyallup Fair.

Toothpick Ferris Wheele
Toothpick Ferris Wheel, Puyallup Fair Museum.

Cow Wash
Working at the cow wash!

Lego Freighthouse Square
Lego Freighthouse Square, Puyallup Fair Hobby Hall.

Monkey Spectrum
Bubble Monkeys, Puyallup Fair.

Selbu Modern at the Fair
Look! A Selbu Modern at the Fair.

Fire in Downtown Tacoma
Something on fire in downtown Tacoma.

One Square
One square done, 15 to go.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Little Squares

I've started a project that I'm only working on at my honey's house.

Little Squares

It's going to be a throw blanket for us to use on his sofa while we watch TV. I'm following the guidelines of the Buncha Squares knitted adaptation of Denyse Schmidt's quilt design, as described on Mason-Dixon Knitting.

I'm using all Cascade 220--a little tweed, but mostly regular 220. The overall color scheme of the blanket is going to be shades of brown (boring, I know, but it needs to blend in with honey's living room), with little bits of plum (left over from the plum tweed sweater) and dark green tweed (left over from some mittens I made for Melisa a couple years ago).

LIttle Squares

It's a whole buncha garter stitch, but that's good TV knitting. I'm going to work 16 squares, and my goal size for the blanket is about 5'x5'.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Stranded!

I decided it was ABOUT TIME I did some stranded, or fair isle, knitting. I indulged a bit at the yarn shop yesterday--first yarn shop purchase in 2 months!! I got 2 skeins of the new Spud & Chloe sock yarn, Datchsun and Calypso, aka brown and light blue, and I'm going to make myself a Selbu Modern. I did a bit of trolling around Ravelry in the forums and the Stranded group and got a few tips, including this helpful video.

I determined to be successful in this attempt, so I've done a right and proper gauge swatch:

Selbu Modern swatch 3.0mm

I worked my gauge swatch in the round--it's more of a gauge tube. I worked one side of the tube with a US 1 1/2 Addi (pictured below), and the other side with a US 2 1/2 Addi (pictured above). The 2 1/2 side ended up at gauge, so that's the size I'm going to use for the main portion of the hat.

Selbu Modern swatch 2.5mm

I worked part of the gauge swatch with floats on the inside of the work, and part of it with the woven technique. In the floats section, I was worried about keeping my floats loose enough so that the fabric doesn't pucker. I was less concerned about my tension in the woven section, but in the end I liked the feel of the non-woven section better. In this pic, the woven section is in the middle, with unwoven sections on the top and bottom:

Selbu Modern swatch--woven vs unwoven

By the end of the gauge tube, I was much more comfortable working the 2 colors. I'm holding the mail color (brown) in my left hand, my usual way of holding yarn, and holding the blue in my right hand. It took a few inches of knitting before I felt like I wasn't a total right-handy klutz, but now I feel like I've gotten the hang of it.

Now to cast on for the actual hat!